Vaccines are doing their jobs preventing disease and death, and even bringing down societal costs, according to a new study in Pediatrics.

But another study, published in the same journal issue, found that public health campaigns touting vaccines’ effectiveness and debunking the links between autism and other health risks might actually be backfiring, and convincing parents to skip the shots for their kids.

“Corrections of misperceptions about controversial issues like vaccines may be counterproductive in some populations,” wrote the researchers behind one of the studies, led by Dr. Brendan Nyhan, a health care researcher at Dartmouth College in Hanover N.H. “The best response to false beliefs is not necessarily providing correct information.”

Both studies were published in the March 3 issue of Pediatrics. Read more at CBS NEWS.

That’s why in Australia, vaccines have been altered to be given only to children 5 and up. That way the autism controversy can be properly monitored. How else are we going to know if an infant of 2 weeks receiving shots was affected or not?

My parents and grandparents would have given their lives to protect their children from the now-preventable childhood diseases. My wife, a physician, has had patients who have had lifelong severe developmental impairment as the result of contracting diseases that vaccines prevent.

And it is so difficult to combat the disinformation being propagated from those who wish evil on our children. For example, just to address the comments here: #1, there is no mercury in any vaccine given in the US today, nor are there any cancer viruses in them. However, one of the now-vaccine-preventable diseases is Hepatitis B, which is a major cause of liver cancer, and another vaccine prevents both the most deadly form of cervical cancer, and head and neck cancer. #2, it has been proven beyond any doubt that vaccines do NOT cause autism; the guy who claimed that was shown to be a fraudster and lost his medical license. In fact, the MMR vaccine has been found to REDUCE rates of autism in the children who receive it because rubella itself is a cause of autism. #3, the paralysis outbreak in California is NOT polio; we don’t know what has caused all the cases but it may be a known virus that still lacks a vaccine. The form of the polio vaccine now used in the US can not under any circumstance cause polio; the virus in the vaccine has been damaged to the point that it can’t replicate itself. The problem is that as a result it isn’t 100% effective so if enough parents fail to vaccinate their kids we will have another outbreak. And vaccines are such a low profit item for the pharmaceutical industry that many of them are producing vaccines only because they want to be good corporate citizens. (It is interesting that so many alleged conservatives can spread such vicious slanders about corporations.)

That some parents would prefer a dead child to an autistic child out to be terrifying to those of us with Jewish values.

Charlie, if your wife is a physician you ought to know that there IS mercury in the flu vaccine (which they give to pregnant women even though the package insert clearly states that it has no studies are available for the safety of giving it to pregnant women). There are also trace amounts in the MMR vaccine and DTaP.

Charlie, it is highly unlikely for a child to contract Hep B unless the mother has it so why do they give it at birth? Cervical cancer is extremely rare especially among frum people so why give it to our teenage girls? Sorry, you need to learn about the diseases themselves and the side effects of the vaccines before making a decision.